


Continuation

by cleodoxa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleodoxa/pseuds/cleodoxa
Summary: Pomona and Minerva's friendship becomes something more during the dark days of Hogwarts' occupation.  Then they must transition to the post-war world.





	Continuation

Pomona did her marking that evening in the company of two students who were doing detention with her. They'd got into something of a fight in her class earlier, hurling compost at each other with wordless roars of rage. One of them hurled a flowerpot against the glass of the greenhouse and cracked it before Pomona was able to intervene. Pomona felt that she saw more genuine misbehaviour than her colleagues these days. Now that there were so many punishments for so many imaginary misdeeds, the students were, as a whole, upsettingly cowed and subdued. Certainly Pomona saw that hush in them. But she saw outbursts too. Perhaps it was the mugginess of the greenhouses bringing out the suppressed tensions. The students hated each other more now. These were not just the usual teenage resentments; the protection the school could offer the students from the desperate power struggle going on in the adult world would have been paper thin even if things at Hogwarts had been different. As it was, the protection of Hogwarts was an almost imaginary membrane, splitting further every day.

The students, Darvey and Watts, spent an hour writing lines. _I must respect school property and keep my voice down around growing things._ Deliberately innocuous. As the three of them scratched away with their quills, all three of them sat tense, prepared for the Carrows or their messengers to invade Pomona's office. Nowhere was really safe. Pomona knew that neither of the boys were among the Carrows' favourites, or wanted to be. Those pupils didn't turn up for detention. They told one of the Carrows, or perhaps even Snape, who would then have a highly unpleasant word with the teacher who had arranged the detention. Certainly teachers didn't like drawing attention to misdemeanours these days. But you had to preserve some sense of order, didn't you, as best you could? Letting everything descend into anarchy would end swiftly and bloodily. 

Having finished marking homework answers she escorted Darvey and Watts to the door of Ravenclaw common room. Then Pomona made her way, not to the staff room, where she had been used to spend the evenings, but to Minerva's office. Much communication among the teachers happened now in two and threes in offices, classrooms and quiet corners. Not that the staffroom was left entirely deserted, for that would make it more obvious that the surveillance which the Carrows thought to carry out there as they lurked, putting in obnoxious rejoinders to every inhibited, inane remark anyone offered, ought to be taken elsewhere. 

Pomona kissed Minerva's cheek as she greeted her, and felt as if she was a wilting plant being refreshed by a much needed watering. She could cope if Snape or the Carrows found out about this and sneered. But she was glad she hadn't had to cope yet. "Busy?" she asked.

"No," said Minerva. She laid down the quill she was holding and sighed. "No, I was idling. I wish I had more to do. It might distract me from all the things I can't do. Is everything all right with you?"

"Oh, well enough. I've just been overseeing two students writing lines for fighting in my last class. I don't know why I get all the rowdy ones these days."

Minerva gave her a quick look. "They feel safe in your classes. They know there will be consequences, but nothing too alarming. I'm afraid that makes your greenhouses the perfect place to let off a little steam."

Ordinarily Pomona might grumble a little about how she wasn't a pushover, even if her middle name wasn't Firm But Fair. Now, though, like so many light-hearted avenues of conversation, it didn't feel quite appropriate. She couldn't defend her professional prowess too energetically without remembering that she was keeping her plants safer than her students these days -- and some of the plants were feeling the strain.

"Shall we?" Pomona asked instead.

It was rather early to disappear but Minerva nodded and got up anyway. Minerva's living quarters weren't too far away, by Hogwarts standards, and they walked there in silence. Pomona didn't find it hard to work out part of the explanation for why they'd started going to bed together after all these years. Too many things unsaid had found another path of communication. Neither of them were _gushy_ people, after all. There hadn't been a disposable excess of demonstration.

Pomona was soon gasping, spread open for Minerva before Minerva had finished kissing her way down Pomona's belly. She loved being the centre of Minerva's attention, watching Minerva make herself responsible for Pomona's pleasure and discharge her responsibilities as efficiently and whole-heartedly as ever.

"Oh, that's good, Min," Pomona said as soon as she felt Minerva's mouth between her legs. She knew that Minerva liked to hear that she was enjoying herself. That had always been her role, really. Pomona was the jolly one who found it easy to enjoy things and somehow made it easier for Minerva to enjoy them too. Now that Pomona had so much more to worry about, Minerva tried to give her something to enjoy. And succeeded. The heat built between Pomona's legs at exactly the right pace. Pomona reached out to stroke Minerva's hair and tried to put all her affection and understanding into the caress.

*

The end of the war came as a largely uncomplicated relief for Pomona. She could build again. She could be useful. She could range freely over the castle and its grounds or pop into Hogsmeade without feeling watched. She could talk to whoever she wanted without having to keep her voice low or speak in code. She could think of welcoming back for their second year the students who had never known any other Hogwarts and how she would show them how they _really_ did things in Hufflepuff. She could roll up her sleeves and get to work.

She didn't realise at once that this wasn't quite how it was for Minerva, though Minerva was certainly busy. It didn't take too long for her to realise that Minerva didn't feel the same simple sense of ease and gratitude, though, because it wasn't that hard to miss. 

"We should have managed things better," Minerva said to her on the morning of the memorial for the victims of the Battle of Hogwarts. She had just finished dressing and Pomona was still in bed with coffee. She had stayed the whole night with Minerva for the first time. It had been the first time they'd slept together since the Battle. Actually, Minerva said it to her reflection in the mirror. Then she turned to Pomona and said, "We should have ended it sooner. Why did we leave it to seventeen-year-olds?"

Pomona sighed. "Oh, Minerva. We did our best, and your best _was_ the best. And we did our best with those seventeen-year-olds, and helped to give them something to fight for." It wasn't enough, she could tell, but she didn't know what would be enough. She set her coffee down on the bedside table and scrambled out of bed and hugged Minerva. Minerva hugged her back. It was a good, close, firm hug, but it wasn't enough.

That night in Minerva's bed wasn't the start of a new habit. They were both so busy, mentally and physically, that it would have been hard to make time to allow themselves to feel things that weren't to do with the school and the rapidly changing face of the wizarding world -- and while Pomona would have been glad to make that time she knew well enough that both plants and people sometimes needed a bit of space and time to get through a tricky period and thrive. They saw each other all the time, of course, but then they saw Argus Filch and Hagrid all the time too. All the staff were working very hard to repair the damage done to the castle by the Battle, and often working together, but there wasn't a lot of time for one-on-one conversation. Pomona had lost a bit of weight with all the charging round the place.

Minerva had lost a little weight too, she thought. It made her look drawn. Pomona was sure to pass her any particularly nice cakes that appeared at the High Table but didn't nag.

Perhaps it had just been a temporary thing. Perhaps their relationship hadn't actually changed. Pomona began to be afraid that second-guessing herself was making her more distant than usual. 

Minerva was to serve as the next Headmistress, of course, and had to make time in her busy schedule to sit for her portrait, a necessity which irritated her though she submitted to it. It was completed swiftly, though Minerva had complained that the portraitist kept pausing his work to gnaw on the end of the paintbrush and look thoughtful.

"I expect you told him that you had places to go and people to see and he should get a move on," Pomona said. "Obviously helped. Hope it helped him get the real you across, too."

When the portrait arrived Minerva invited Pomona to come and see it in her study, installed among the portraits of the other Heads. Pomona exclaimed approvingly over it. "And I'm so proud of you," she said. "Seeing you in with all this lot, and I know you've done better than half of them already."

She turned to the real Minerva, only to find that there were tears trickling down her face. They didn't seem to be happy tears. "Min, what is it?" she asked while Minerva was already flapping her hand dismissively.

"I'm a bit under the weather lately, I don't know why this happens," she said.

Pomona ignored the flapping and squashed her into an embrace. "Minerva, darling, you silly girl," she said. Quite what silliness she meant, she wasn't sure. Not the crying. Perhaps not getting Pomona to hold her while she cried earlier, because Minerva was crying now, not just getting a bit watery round the eyes. Pomona could tell somehow that it was a relief of a kind and wished she'd made it happen earlier. She stroked between Minerva's jerking shoulder blades. They were there for a while. Minerva's face wasn’t abashed when she let go of Pomona. 

Pomona liked to think she seemed calmer after that but seeing as the customary flurry of preparation for September took hold at this point, worse than ever before, she wasn't entirely confident she could tell. At any rate, they were managing to see a little more of each other and fell back into those little touches and kisses of greeting and parting.

*

It would not have been quite right to say that the new term went _well_. Fear did not go away just like that. The students had nightmares and attacked each other in the corridors. Having had a year of their education so badly disrupted, it took both the students and the teachers a while to work out what page they were on. Still, it went quite as well as could be expected and the place looked and sounded like Hogwarts again, rather than a prison or a battle site.

A few weeks in Pomona was in one of the greenhouses before breakfast, setting things up for the first lesson. She could have done it after breakfast but there was something she liked about being in the greenhouses either before the day had really started or after it had ended. It made them seem at once larger and more safely enclosing, somehow, like a bubble sailing alone through the sky. She liked the early morning sky. Even when it was a grey, overcast day like today, the sky looked pearly and luminous through the glass.

She looked up when she heard someone enter the greenhouse. Minerva, looking cheerful and flushed by the sharp wind.

"Just been for a quick walk," Minerva said, looking to see if there was anything she could help with. Pomona had almost finished, however. When she had, she stood still, looking at Minerva. Minerva looked back at her and took her hand. Then she kissed her, leaning in slowly as if it were their first and she was cautiously signalling her intentions. Pomona tipped her head back and let Minerva be gentle with her before making the kiss fiercer. She and Minerva weren't just one of those wartime things, she decided. She didn’t think either of them would let them be.


End file.
